A classic for many years, this is a collection of 25 stories by "America's foremost humorist of the 1920's and one of the country's best fiction writers" ( New York Daily News). A sportswriter by trade, Larnder had a superb ear for regional speech peculiarities and was dearly loved for his humor.

The Best Short Stories: 25 Stories from America's Foremost Humorist

Literature & Fiction

Lardner, Ring

Humor & Satire

Collier Books

"You Know me Al" is a classic of baseball--the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature's greatest characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious. 
Nostalgic in its view of pre-World War I America--a time before the "live" ball, a time filled with names like Ty Cobb, Charles Comiskey, Walter Johnson, and Eddie Cicotte--this is not a simple period piece. It is about competition, about the ability to reason, and most of all it is about being human. First published in 1914, "You Know Me Al" says as much to us about ourselves today as it did seventy-five years ago.

You Know Me Al

Parenting & Relationships

Touchstone

These "sketches" comprise commentary that has appeared in various publications, including "Good Housekeeping, The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, Collier's", and "Trotter and Pacer", throughout Lardner's illustrious career.

Some Champions

Sports & Outdoors

Ring Lardner first burst upon the literary scene with his greatest popular success, "You Know Me Al". A sportswriter by trade, Lardner had a superb ear for regional peculiarities in speech and was loved for his sense of humor. Funny, sarcastic, sometimes bitter but always ironic, Lardner understood Americans-- their desires, their dreams, and their disappointments. Contained in "Haircut and Other Stories" are some of Lardner's best-known pieces: "Haircut", "Alibi Ike", "The Love Nest", "Zone of Quiet", and "Champion". Through these pages pass con men; an opinionated small-town barber; a nurse who chatters on and on, much to the chagrin of her charges; baseball players who have excuses for everything; and boxers who try to make it in the fight game. Published in "The Saturday Evening Post", "Collier's" and "Vanity Fair", Lardner enjoyed great success and was heralded as a singular talent by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken, and Virginia Woolf. "Haircut and Other Stories" is a celebration of people and of America, and is a must for anyone interested in classic American fiction.

Haircut and Other Stories

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Ring Lardner was an American original. He had countless imitators -- journalists who tried to reproduce his uncanny virtuosity with the American idiom; writers who tried to evoke his brilliant blend of drama and irony. Yet he remains without rival. You Know Me AI is Ring Lardner at his best. It is a classic of baseball, the game, and the community. Through a series of letters from a bush-league pitcher to his not quite anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a superb balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious. And Jack Keefe, the correspondent of these letters, is one of his most brilliant achievements. In a revealing and comprehensive introduction, John Lardner, the author's son and a well-known writer himself, demonstrates, with the testimony of such disparate voices as Virginia Woolf and H. L. Mencken, the awesomely complex reputation of You Know Me Al.

YOU KNOW ME AL

Scribner

This collection brings together twenty-one of Lardner’s best pieces, including the six Jack Keefe stories that comprise You Know Me, Al, as well as such familiar favorites as “Alibi Ike,” “Some Like Them Cold,” and “Guillible’s Travels.” For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Ring Lardner: Selected Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Dramas & Plays

Penguin Publishing Group

Ring Lardner's You know me Al: The comic strip adventures of Jack Keefe (A Harvest book)

Comics & Graphic Novels

Comic Strips

Harcourt, Brace. Jovanovich

The publication of You Know Me Al brought instant fame to Ring Lardner (1885-1933), one of the great American humorists of this century. Considered the satirist's greatest work, the book is a collection of letters from one Jack Keefe, a baseball "busher," to his longtime friend, Al Blanchard, in their midwestern hometown. The voice of Jack Keefe perfectly echoes the vernacular of the baseball players Lardner had covered for years as a newspaper reporter following the exploits of Chicago's Cubs and White Sox. Readers instantly recognized in Jack the full range of human foibles. This universality accounts for the enduring appeal of You Know Me Al. "Ring Lardner is the idol of professional humorists and of plenty of other people, too." -- E. B. White "His work is a contribution of genuine and permanent value to the national literature." -- H. L. Mencken "Mr. Lardner . . . lets Jack Keefe the baseball player cut out his own outline until the figure of the foolish, boastful, innocent athlete lives with us." -- Virginia Woolf

You Know Me Al (Prairie State Books)

University of Illinois Press

A collection of short stories by the twentieth-century American author including Alibi Ike, Champion, Horseshoes, and The Love Nest

Haircut & Other Stories

Vintage

The career of an inept but impetuous baseball pitcher is recorded in letters to a friend

You Know Me, AL

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